'The woke mob should be shown the red card over Kevin Keegan attacks', says Mark Dolan

The footie legend who played for and managed his country said he had “a problem” with “an England lady footballer” providing expert analysis of a match involving Gareth Southgate’s England side.

In comments reported by The Times, he told guests at a football event “I don’t like to listen to ladies talking about the England men’s team at the match because I don’t think it’s the same experience.

“I have a problem with that.”

Well, this icon of the men's game has been condemned for his and I quote “archaic, nonsensical and uneducated remarks” about women pundits analysing the England men's team.

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​Don't forget though, these days, being called uneducated and being ordered to “go and educate yourself” is doublespeak for “you have the wrong opinions which do not fit the prescribed political narrative, you need to fix your thinking, you need to change your unwelcome, unfashionable thoughts”.

But people in glasshouses shouldn't throw rocks.

Former England striker and top pundit Eni Aluko dubbed Keegan a dinosaur.

Oh dear – isn't that a bit, you know, ageist?

After all, he is 72.

To call someone a dinosaur is a direct allusion to their age.

But that's okay, you're allowed offensive slurs if you're on the right side of the argument.

Perhaps more egregiously Aluko – who is a huge talent in the game - told the Telegraph no one wants to hire dinosaurs, so his view is really his problem.

“No one wants to hire dinosaurs” – nice flavour of cancel culture thrown in there.

Yeah, let's stop the guy earning a living for wrong-think.

Welcome to 2023.

Yvonne Harrison, the CEO of Women in Football, claimed Keegan's comments were symptomatic of widespread misogyny faced by women within the game.

Now that may well be the case and sexism in the game is real and it’s appalling, but this is a deeply unfair interpretation of Keegan's words.

Far be it for me to defend the guy, his language about “ladies” and all the rest of it was a touch clumsy, but it's quite clear that what he's saying is that those offering commentary and punditry on - for example - Premier League men's football or the national game, ought to be people who have played at that level, which would be, checks notes - former Premier League or ex England male footballers.

It cuts both ways.

I don't think retired male tennis players should be commentating on top-level women's tennis.

John McEnroe, for all of his trophies, should not be a pundit on matches featuring Emma Raducanu or the Williams sisters, it should be Martina Navratilova or Chris Evert.

The aforementioned Yvonne Harrison, a great champion of women in football and someone for whom I have high regard has taken the language up a level by calling this gender apartheid in football.

To invoke the evil crimes of the South African regime in the 1980s, in which people lived, drastically different lives, based upon their skin colour, in a debate about who sits in a TV studio, is in my view, deeply offensive and trivialises that horrific original crime.

It's like virtue-signalling commentators who disgracefully invoke the Holocaust to win a trivial argument on Twitter.

Now it’s myview that female broadcasters in men's football have made a brilliant contribution and I'd like to see more.

I've got no problem with Alex Scott presenting football focus – she replaced Dan Walker, who has never kicked a ball in his life. Jacqui Oatley, Clare Balding, Sue Barker, Laura Woods – among the best sports presenters out there.

But surely, the pundits should be ex-pros from the games they are watching.

They should surely have played at that level, in order to be credible.

Kevin Keegan is getting slated for saying what many people think, which is the norm now, in the clown world of 2023.

The backlash against his comments, in which he spoke highly of women's football, is typical of how everything has been politicised and anyone not aligned to the religious woke scripture will have all hell unleashed upon them.

You can agree with him, you can disagree with him.

But those attacking Kevin Keegan for daring to have an opinion should be shown the red card and sent down the tunnel for an early bath. This story is balls.